All posts tagged: Deportations

EU strikes migration deal for deportations and detention centers abroad : NPR

EU strikes migration deal for deportations and detention centers abroad : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Police conduct a search operation at a makeshift camp of migrants who want to cross the English Channel to Britain near Dunkirk, northern France, Wednesday, May 27, 2026. Jean-Francois Badias/AP hide caption toggle caption Jean-Francois Badias/AP BRUSSELS — The European Union has moved forward with a vast overhaul of its migration policy, aiming to ramp up deportations and ink controversial deals to build detention centers abroad, in what rights groups compare to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies. “The new regulation will speed up the return process and increase returns of persons who have no legal right to stay in the EU,” said Nicholas Ioannides, deputy migration minister for Cyprus, which holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc. The deal was struck between the EU’s three main institutions — the European Commission, the European Council and European Parliament — during a so-called “trilogue” Monday evening. Critics compared the regulation to the immigration strategy of the Trump administration, which has struck a series of secretive agreements with nations around the world to deport thousands of …

In Los Angeles, a sister offers shelter and mercy to immigrants convicted of crimes

In Los Angeles, a sister offers shelter and mercy to immigrants convicted of crimes

Published by Sam Flores

LOS ANGELES (RNS) — Sister Teresa Groth calls herself a “pardoned sinner” who seeks to be “an instrument of mercy in the hands of God” — words paraphrased from the constitution of the Daughters of Mary and Joseph, her congregation. As executive director of Francisco Homes, a Los Angeles housing program for formerly incarcerated men, she says that calling has guided her work. Since 2009, Groth has been welcoming men who served long sentences and easing their transition back into the world.  Groth came to religious life later than most. Widowed at 30 with a baby, she said she threw herself into her parish and, in her early 30s, had a religious experience she describes as God addressing her guilt directly: “Just rest in my love. Trust me.” After her son left for college, she entered the Daughters of Mary and Joseph and came to Francisco Homes in her second year of formation. “First, we recognize that we have received mercy. I have received mercy,” Groth, 70, said. Founded in 2007 as an extension of a project of the …

Evangelical groups warn Trump’s deportations could leave 1.3M ‘torn apart’ from families

Evangelical groups warn Trump’s deportations could leave 1.3M ‘torn apart’ from families

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — A new report created by a pair of evangelical Christian organizations is raising alarms about the effects of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort on families, arguing that more than 1 million people could be “torn apart” from their families if current immigration policies continue at expected rates. The report, which was released on Monday (May 4), was produced through a partnership between two prominent evangelical Christian organizations: World Relief, which helps resettle refugees, and the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella organization that represents a broad swath of evangelicals. Titled “Joined Together, Torn Apart: How U.S. Immigration Policies Are Separating Families,” the report argues Trump’s controversial immigration policies are harming families by separating spouses as well as children from their parents through deportations and detentions. The authors stress they are “not saying that all deportations are unjust or unwarranted,” but cite Scripture to argue that “Jesus makes abundantly clear that what God has joined together in marriage, human institutions should not separate.” On a press call with reporters on Monday, NAE President …

Spain launches programme to offer amnesty to 500,000 undocumented migrants

Spain launches programme to offer amnesty to 500,000 undocumented migrants

Published by Sam Flores

With a few scratches of a pen, Spain’s Socialist-led government on Tuesday prepared to grant legal status to roughly half a million people now living and working in the country without documentation. Foreign nationals with clean criminal records who arrived before the end of 2025, and who can prove they’ve lived in Spain for at least five months, are now eligible for renewable one-year residence permits. People who applied for asylum in the country before December 31 will also be able to apply.  This extraordinary mass regularisation – the first in Spain in more than 20 years – was born from a citizen-backed proposal signed by some 700,000 people and supported by hundreds of civil society groups, including the Catholic Church.  While most immigrants in Spain have legal status, the country’s booming economy has also drawn hundreds of thousands of largely working-age people from across the world to work in the country’s underground economy. Undocumented migrants work on construction sites, on farms, in shops and restaurants or in people’s homes, cooking and cleaning and caring for …

Kristi Noem Is Gone. Now Mass Deportations Can Really Begin.

Kristi Noem Is Gone. Now Mass Deportations Can Really Begin.

Published by José Betancourt

Markwayne Mullin cultivated a reputation in Congress as a brawler, but he sounded more like a peacemaker as he was sworn in this week as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. “I don’t care what color your state is. I don’t care if you’re red or you’re blue,” Mullin, a former mixed-martial-arts fighter, said during the brief Oval Office ceremony, with President Trump looking over his shoulder. “My job is to be secretary of Homeland and to protect everybody the same.” Mullin’s conciliatory tone has concerned some of the most ardent supporters of Trump’s immigration crackdown. They worry that the president has lost his nerve after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January, and that firing Kristi Noem signaled a retreat from his promise to conduct the largest mass-deportation campaign in U.S. history. Some Trump opponents have a similar view; they are hopeful that the civic resistance displayed in Minneapolis stopped the administration’s authoritarian march in its tracks. Although Mullin gives Trump a different face at DHS, his arrival doesn’t change …

As Trump Pushes Deportations, Immigration Data Becomes Harder to Find

As Trump Pushes Deportations, Immigration Data Becomes Harder to Find

Published by Sam Flores

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration likes to promote its immigration enforcement agenda through numbers, with ambitious goals to deport 1 million people, report zero releases at the U.S.-Mexico border and arrest thousands of alleged gang members. For all the boasting, the administration has been releasing less reliable, carefully vetted data than its predecessors on a signature policy that has become one of the most contentious of Trump’s second term. The gap in information and a loss of figures from an office that has tracked immigration data back to the 1800s have left researchers, advocates, lawyers and journalists without important statistics to hold the Republican administration to account. “They aren’t publishing the data,” said Mike Howell, who heads the conservative Oversight Project, an advocacy group pushing for more deportations. Instead, Howell said, the Department of Homeland Security has put out numbers in news releases “that purport to be statistics with no statistical backup and the numbers have jumped all over the place.” With mass deportations a priority, new restrictions and increased enforcement have led to …

Deportations surge, aid collapses and faith groups in Latin America struggle to respond

Deportations surge, aid collapses and faith groups in Latin America struggle to respond

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — At least once a week, relief workers from Jesuit Refugee Service Mexico see a grim routine: Newly arrived deportees step off planes in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, near Mexico’s southern border, still wearing gray detention uniforms issued in the United States. Transported in handcuffs and stripped of their belongings, they are released onto the street with little more than the clothes they are wearing. Some appear confused. Many do not know where they are. “People arrive with nothing — no money, no way to move and no network to help them,” said Karen Pérez, country director of Jesuit Refugee Service Mexico, or JRS-MX. Her staff, which operates from three offices across Mexico, has shrunk from 70 to 28 people in the past year because of U.S. federal funding cuts to humanitarian aid, leaving the group struggling to meet the growing needs of deportees. Similar organizations across Latin America have also faced budget blows. Since January 2025, the Trump administration has dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), prompting a lawsuit from organizations such as …

Trump fires homeland security chief and immigration-crackdown enforcer Kristi Noem

Trump fires homeland security chief and immigration-crackdown enforcer Kristi Noem

Published by Sam Flores

US President Donald Trump on Thursday fired Kristi Noem as head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency responsible for carrying out his sweeping immigration crackdown. According to multiple media reports, Trump was upset with Noem’s testimony at a Senate hearing this week where she said the president had approved a $220 million DHS advertising campaign in which she featured prominently. Trump in a post on Truth Social said Markwayne Mullen, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, would take over from Noem at the powerful department on March 31. Read more‘I spent almost four months in a prison cell’: Journalist Mario Guevara on covering ICE The president said Noem, 54, would become his special envoy for a new security initiative in the Western Hemisphere he called “The Shield of the Americas”. Noem “has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!)”, Trump said. Trump described Mullin as a “MAGA Warrior” and said he will be a “spectacular Secretary of Homeland Security”. Mullin’s nomination will be subject to confirmation …

In Minnesota, US cardinals and pope’s ambassador decry mass deportations and call for reconciliation

In Minnesota, US cardinals and pope’s ambassador decry mass deportations and call for reconciliation

Published by Sam Flores

ST PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Two American cardinals and the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S. denounced the mass deportations in Minnesota under the federal government’s immigration crackdown, but they urged everyone to repair strained relations and work together toward humane solutions. In St. Paul on Friday, Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington addressed growing concerns with immigration enforcement while highlighting the need to be peacemakers on the polarizing issue after a Mass for migrants he celebrated with his fellow prelates and the Twin Cities’ archbishop. McElroy depicted this winter’s enforcement surge as “almost a siege” that unfolded in “literally the heartland of our country.” “Catholic teaching supports the nation’s right to control its border and, in these cases, to deport those who’ve been convicted of serious crimes,” he said. “Seeking to deport millions of men and women and children — families who often lived here for decades, many children who don’t know other countries — is contrary to Catholic faith and, more fundamentally, contrary to basic human dignity.” McElroy joined Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New …

Biden-Appointed Judge Rules Illegal Immigrants Can Dispute Third Country Deportations

Biden-Appointed Judge Rules Illegal Immigrants Can Dispute Third Country Deportations

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times, A federal judge ruled on Feb. 25 that the government cannot deport illegal immigrants to so-called third countries without giving them “meaningful notice” and an opportunity to dispute their removal. In Wednesday’s ruling, Massachusetts District Judge Brian Murphy (nominated by President Biden on March 21, 2024) declared unlawful two policy memos, one by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and another by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Those memos said that if the U.S. had received credible diplomatic assurances from a third country that deportees would not face persecution or torture, they could be sent there without any extra procedures. “[DHS] has adopted a policy whereby it may take people and drop them off in parts unknown … and, ‘as long as the Department doesn’t already know that there’s someone standing there waiting to shoot … that’s fine,’” he wrote. “It is not fine, nor is it legal.” Murphy ruled that federal regulations required that illegal immigrants be deported to either their home country, or another country as …